


Twin High Maintenance Machines

by capripian



Series: This Year (Sasha Week 2021) [7]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: (points at zolf) that's her dad!!, Canon-typical character undeath, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Scars, Takes place on the airship to prague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28945647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capripian/pseuds/capripian
Summary: Day 7: ScarsEverything hurts. Everything hurts and she can feel her body breaking down and she wonders how it can ever be okay.Even if it's never going to get better, at least Zolf is there to help her handle it.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith
Series: This Year (Sasha Week 2021) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111829
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30
Collections: Sasha Week 2021





	Twin High Maintenance Machines

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Sasha Week day 7, Scars! Every day I think about how Zolf left directly after learning that Sasha had a degenerative magic disease that only he could help her with. Every day.
> 
> Title for this fic and the series is, as always, This Year by the Mountain Goats. At this point I've strip-mined that song of all its potential fic titles.
> 
> CWs for descriptions of injuries/blood and also implied/mentioned child abuse.

The airship whirs. The floorboards creak. Sasha lets out a low groan and shifts, feeling the slick wet of blood on her back. By the angle of the sun hitting her in the face, it must be just past sunrise. Ughhhhhhh.

She sits up, and feels some skin tear away from her back with a sharp pain. Fuck. That’s… probably not good. It’s only been a day since Zolf told her about her… illness? Condition? She’s not sure what to call it, all things considered.

That doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it’s bad news for her. Case in point: everything fucking  _ hurts,  _ and apparently it’s not gonna get better. Like… ever. 

It’s still hard to believe that she could live long enough for something chronic to worry her. She didn’t even expect to live past her teen years, at least not until Gusset. 

Sasha stumbles as she tries to stand up from the hammock, and puts one hand on a support beam. She’s suddenly very grateful she doesn’t have to share a room with Bertie. The thought of having to explain all of this to him… eugh.

Zolf and Hamid’s room is right next door to hers, and the blood and wooziness doesn’t make her  _ totally  _ incompetent. She can still slip in without waking Hamid and carefully shake Zolf awake by one shoulder. She grimaces when she sees the blood she gets on his beard, but it works well enough.

He’s weary, but sits up quietly enough that no alarms go off in Sasha’s brain. When he sees the blood on her palms, his demeanor changes from barely-awake to suddenly-focused. 

She looks at Zolf with an expression on her face that she hopes is suitably panicked to get him to understand. He nods back, and stands up with a faint watery noise from his legs. 

They go back into her room, and Zolf lets out the sigh of someone who can finally speak after having to keep quiet. “What hurts?”

Sasha shrugs, and then hisses when it pulls on a wound. “...All of it? Mostly my back, but also my arms and legs and chest and all.”

“Yeah, that’s, er, that’s all of it. Are you okay with taking off your shirt? I don’t want to make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with, but-”

“I get it. Look, mate, I trust you.” 

She’s almost surprised that she does, really. It’s only been a month, and it took at least four before she fully trusted Bi Ming. Makes sense, though. Tough not to trust someone who put you back together from the inside out.

Zolf seems surprised as well, blinking a moment while she peels off her shirt and kneels down to show him her back. “Alright.”

He touches the top of the falcon scar gingerly, and pulls his hand away when Sasha flinches.

“That hurts?”

“Well, yeah, mate, it’s got blood all over it. I didn’t really think it was gonna... not hurt.”

“Just checking. That’s where most of it is, just because that scar’s so big.”

Sasha nods. She remembers it in vivid detail, Bertie crushing her from above like the shittiest avenging angel.

“So,” she begins, suddenly awkward. “What… what happened, do you think?”

He shrugs. “Could be a lot of things, when you stop and think about it. Could be that you got cursed. Could be, er…” he trails off. “Could be multiple magics interacting poorly? That’s more Hamid’s area of expertise than mine, though.”

The words are out of her mouth before she can think of their deeper meaning. “Don’t tell Hamid.”

“...Alright.”

It’s not that she doesn’t trust Hamid. It’s just. It’s different, alright? Zolf gets it, in a way Hamid and Bertie most certainly do not. 

“So-” Zolf starts again, before stopping. “So, er, do you have any… magic scars? Scars from gettin’ hit with spells and such, that kind of thing.”

She doesn’t have to think about that one, not in the slightest. “Got some, yeah. From a wizard, if that… matters? Not tryin’ to hurt, just, like… you know rope burn?”

“I’m familiar with rope burn, yes.”

“Like rope burn, but from magic. You get it on you and then it kinda chafes until there's marks.”

“How did that happen?”

Sasha grimaces. Apparently Earhart knew about Eldarion and Rakefine because of the Harlequins, and if Zolf was also a Harlequin… no. They probably didn’t know each other. Zolf didn’t even know about any of it. 

She’s been thinking for too long, and Zolf speaks up again. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. It’s probably not it, I’m just covering bases.”

“N-no, it’s… it’s fine. Just thinking.”

Zolf is trustworthy, she thinks. The others aren’t really, but she believes in Zolf. And besides which, he’s not fancy enough to be part of Eldarion’s lot. 

She tries to imagine Zolf next to Eldarion and stifles a chuckle. She’d tower over him, all spindly and jeweled next to his muddy brown raincoat. And he'd offend her with his 'lack of manners' in two seconds flat. There's no way they're working together. 

“You heard about Eldarion, yeah?”

“Just from Earhart yesterday. Is she who did it?”

“Not on purpose. I don’t think, anyway.” That’s still a tough one. Sasha doesn’t think Eldarion would hurt her on purpose, if only because it’s not her style, but she  _ was  _ working with Barrett. Or, probably was anyway. 

“How did she hurt you with magic but not on purpose? Seems pretty purposeful, you know?”

Sasha shrugs. “I’d try and leave, she’d use magic to stop me, we’d go back to square one. She didn’t ever hurt me the way the Rackets would. Didn’t draw any blood or anythin’. She was just... rough.”

The glistening bands of scar tissue are bleeding slightly. She doesn’t think they ever bled when she got them, but it’s hard to say. 

“Doesn’t make it better, Sasha. Even if she didn’t want to hurt you, she still did. C’mere, I’ll heal those for you.” 

Zolf’s hand over her back is cool to the touch, and the pain stops as she feels her skin knit back together. It’s a relatively new feeling, magic being used to help and not harm. She could get used to it.

“Thanks, Zolf.”

“Nothin’ to thank me for, it’s my job.”

Sasha shakes her head. “No, not just this. Thanks for everything. If you weren’t there to save me from Barrett’s men, I don’t know if I would’ve gotten out. Not to mention Mister Ceiling and all that.”

Zolf pauses a moment, evidently not expecting that. “Ah. Well. Right then. You’re welcome, Sasha. I’m glad I could help you.”

She starts to pull her shirt back on, cautious just in case the pain returns. It doesn’t. Zolf’s healing is good that way. 

“I’m just glad you’re going to be sticking around, mate. Y’know? It’s… good. To know that you’ll be helping me with this.”

His expression as he walks out of her room is pensive, and slightly guilty for reasons she doesn’t know yet. “...Yeah.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please leave comments or kudos.
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr at @capripian and @capripian-arts, or talk to me on discord at fey dyke#2644.
> 
> If I've made any typos point 'em out in the comments and I'll fix them.
> 
> This marks the end of Sasha Week! Thank you so much to everybody who came on this journey with me. This was my first time ever doing an event like this, and I'd like to think it went fairly well considering I wrote one of these fics a day. I'll have to try to do it again sometime.


End file.
